Swans and Lobsters
by MarySue0209
Summary: Prone to speaking through the words of great writers and philosophers, Edward is simply wading through the monotony of high school. His exhibitionist tendencies are the only thing keeping him from completely losing his mind until he finds himself utterly undone by the mysteries and riddles of the Swan about town. AH/Mature
1. Chapter 1

**Story Disclaimer: All publically recognisable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.**

 **This story contains, though is not limited to, drug use, profanity, discussion of domestic violence, rape, and sexually explicit acts. Read at your own discretion.**

* * *

 **Edward Masen**

 _ **His balcony, cigarette in one hand, flaccid cock in the other.**_

* * *

"In the depth of winter," he says, looking out onto the tops of trees, "I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." His Benson and Hedges breath billows and mixes with the mist of condensation, an opaque fog settling into the fibres of his linen pyjama pants, and sinking into his sallow skin. The tip of his cock oozes out a morsel of semen, and he mindlessly rubs it across the slit. "For it says that no matter—"

"Edward!" his father Carlisle calls, knocking on his bedroom door, before pushing it open. He startles and whips his hand out of his pyjamas, but Carlisle's keen eye misses nothing. "Stop molesting yourself and get dressed," he sighs, shaking his head watching Edward continuing to smoke, shivering from the cold. "Fifteen minutes, Edward."

A tense second. A swish. A click.

Edward's hand goes back to his cock, palming it with strong, resolute stroke. He's reached the end of his compulsory morning cigarette, and the tip is blisteringly hot at his lips but he smokes it until there is nothing left but the sponge tip damp with his saliva. It falls from his hands and onto the paved stones at his bare feet. Just as he's about to turn, a movement in the neighbouring house catches his eye. Charlie Swan, the chief of police here in Forks, Washington, lives in the property next to theirs', but his drive is empty as per usual. Edward guesses his woman of the month hasn't disappeared before daybreak like those before her.

"Man's a machine," Edward muses enviously. This would be the eighth time this month that he's caught someone there. But there's something off today, not least because she's stuck around. He watches with a keen eye, squinting through the morning haze, pass the molecules of vapour until his jade eyes meet keen dark ones looking out of the window into the yard straddling their properties. From this distance, she looks to be an ageless beauty, a single ivory blanket wrapped around her curves. Edward witnesses the very moment when her eyes falter, travel south and see him feverously working his cock under a thin cover of pale blue linen.

It's a train wreck.

Edward stumbles back into his room, closing the double doors and curtains behind him, whilst the stranger in Charlie's home moves back from the window of a spare bedroom and out of sight. His heart is racing with adrenaline, and a few seconds later, cum is coating his fingers, his pyjamas, and dripping down his balls and thighs.

"God above," he gasps, chuckling, "you are a comedian playing to an audience that is simply too afraid to laugh."

"Edward! Ten minutes!" Carlisle thunders up the stairs.

* * *

After dropping Carlisle off at the hospital, where he held a post as the head neurosurgeon (who knew the demand in this town of some three thousand people would be so high?), Edward pulls into the parking lot of the solitary high school, aptly named Forks High. Carlisle's Mercedes was in a garage down at the Quileute reservation suffering a suspicious complete engine failure on the same day as he turned down a too-persistent receptionist for sex for the umpteenth time this month. Carlisle decided not to press charges, but it was common knowledge that Charlotte Stanley had a violent streak. Jessica, daughter of the relentless woman, met her mother toe to toe in her tenacity; if you scored more than a six-point-five on the arbitrary scale of attractiveness then there was a very real chance you had seen either the deep rose of her nipples or the coarse strawberry-blonde arrow obscenely pointing down at her labia.

Jessica jumps into the passenger seat of Edward's Volvo and works open the three buttons of his fly all before the ignition is turned off. It's her signature move. He hisses as she roughly tugs his half-mast cock out his jeans, but the way she practically inhales him to the hilt, halts all his protests. His fingers bury themselves into the mass of curls in his lap, head thrown back against his head rest. He would never tire of this, moaning when she cups his balls in her hands, fingers rubbing against his perineum. What she lacks in skill (as improbable as it may be), she more than makes up in her inventiveness.

Edward, through heavy lids, looking out over the parking lot and sees teenagers, fellow classmates, slowly starting to make their way through the gates, but the car's parked in an ideal spot: far away from the prying eyes of the schoolteachers, sat in their lounge going through their daily morning briefings, but if anyone was to come closer they could see the strings of saliva that Jessica sloppily is leaving behind on each of the upward strokes, and the way Edward humps into her mouth. But today, on this drizzly morn, there is something lacking, something Edward only realises when Jessica huffs and sitting up.

"What's your issue today?" she hissed, swiping at her mouth, and looking down at his lap.

Edward follows her gaze, seeing something that reddens his cheeks, and he stuffing himself back into his jeans, saying nonchalantly, "I jerked off this morning," and then as an afterthought adds, "but that's never stopped you before."

Jessica looks affronted, as if he had spat in her face and then snapped a picture. "How … this is not … you're the one who can't come!" she splutters.

Edward finds himself laughing a hollow sound. "I came this morning Stanley, so obviously, I don't have an issue there. Maybe you're losing y—"

"Oh go fuck yourself," she hisses, getting out of his car as quickly as she hopped in. Edward thinks he catches a glimpse of glassy tears in her eyes, but chose not to linger on her sentimentalities; if she treated herself with more respect then he would perhaps allow her more dignity, and the fact that she was now across the lot kissing Tyler Crowley, giving him a taste of Edward's cock, is reason enough for him to side-line her needs.

"Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced," Edward tells himself, pulling himself together and getting out of his car. He thinks over his sixteen years of abstinence before Jessica had grabbed his hand and tugged him behind the bleachers this gone spring, falling to her knees in front of him, and staring up at him with her Aryan eyes. It was the break in the dam, but Edward reasoned that the only reason he succumbed was because the idea of being caught at any minute. Indeed, it elevated his post-cum high to an ethereal level, and he quickly became addicted to the way Jessica made him feel.

It was the beginning of February now, the start of the Spring semester, and Edward's Ivy League dreams were just within reach. He was a literature buff, but his heart lay in the clouds with the German Idealists, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Carlisle had paled at the mention of college tuition fees being 'wasted' on a philosophy degree, so Edward settled on 18th-century British literature to appease his father, dreaming of a life of academia. He wondered how many times he could edge an orgasm in half-empty lecture theatres.

He speculates whether Jessica has developed feelings towards him, and the thought makes his hackles rise, and bile swims in his mouth. He picks up his new timetable for the semester, walking towards his biology class after a quick once over, the halls are cluttered with wandering freshmen, fresh meat, the guys looking on with a kind of Freudian hero-worship, and females leaking pheromones in a way that makes his libido awaken. They're children, Edward realises, just children with breasts. He walks faster, fingers twitching for a cigarette or a cup of joe.

"Hey! Edward!" Jasper Hale yells from the other side of the seemingly unending hallway. Jasper was Edward's longest and dearest friends. When he's close enough, Edward gives the dishevelled blonde a simpering look: his shirt buttons are all wrong, eyes bloodshot, smelling distinctly of Tyler's new stash of Mary Jane.

"Jasper," he smiles, briefly hugging his lanky friend. "How was Scotland?"

"Cold," he answers, shrugging. "What do you have?"

"Biology. Molina."

"Goff. Spanish."

Edward tuts. "You should have taken French, you swine, should've taken French."

"Just because you want to dig up Descartes' dead body and stick your dick in it doesn't mean—"

"Shut up dickwad," Edward growls, punching his shoulder, and leaving the boy cursing under his breath, cursing Edward's deceptive power.

Edward gives Molina a reserved half-smile when he enters, pulling out a wad of papers from his A5-sized, leather-bound notebook. Molina looks at the five-thousand-word essay on human cloning with great interest and is still reading it when she walks in. Edward sits at his desk at the back of the room, drinking in all the expressions on his teacher's face as if it were his life force, but by instinct, they flit to all the folk that enter through the door. After spending years studying in the same school, they're all friends with Edward, and so polite smiles are exchanged. But the girl, the girl is something else Edward decrees, and truly, she's someone else. She's a stranger in this sickeningly familial town.

She's wearing a sweatshirt for a dress, chestnut ringlets piled on top of her head in a haphazard knot, a Barnes and Noble tote slung over her shoulder. She doesn't make eye contact with anyone, surveying the room itself with a slow and precise look. Her eyes are messily lined with kohl, lips a natural scarlet, and donning a pair of impractically heeled boots that give her an additional four inches. She's statuesque and striking and sexy, and Edward's breath catches a little.

Finally, she registers Molina at his desk, and clears her throat to gain his attention. They either speak quietly or Edward's pulse really is drumming _that_ loudly in his ears. When she turns, she walks with purpose to the back of the room, not meeting Edward's eyes, and slides into the seat next to him. She smells like strawberry sin, and when she crosses a leg over the other, the sweatshirt rides up revealing thick milky thighs, covered in pearlescent hosiery.

"Don't fear, I'm wearing underwear."

Edward snaps his head up at the low deep voice beside him. For a moment Edward wonders whether he's hearing things, but the tell-tale sight of a deep-set furrow between her dark brows, and the quirk of her lips begs to differ.

"Have you ever stopped to think of underwear in the abstract?" says Edward, quoting Ferlinghetti as mindlessly as he quoted everything else, as mindlessly as he speaks plainly. There's something in his brain that forces him to recite prose, poetry, and philosophy the moment it comes to his brain. It's got him in and out many a sticky situation, and though it is involuntarily now he hoped it would deflect some attention away from his wandering eye.

The girl regards him with a derisory eye, huffs, dismissing him, continuing to pull out a new-looking iPhone from her pocket, dragging up an eBook of Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ , and reading it with a ramrod straight back. Edward can quote it just as easily as anything else but refrains. He had already got off on the wrong foot with her, and coming across as a smartass would, most likely, not do him any favours.

A couple of minutes later, the class all seated, all looking at the girl beside Edward with curiosity. Molina breaks the palpable tension by calling on her:

"Miss Swan? Would you like to introduce yourself to the class?"

She tears her eyes away from the book as if it pains her, Edward realises, and a pregnant pause follows before she gives her answer, "No thanks, Mr. Molina, I'm alright."

* * *

Edward lies in his bed, considering the impossible girl. If he's honest, referring to her simply as 'the girl' is troubling him; she's not just 'a girl', no. The air around her reeks with poise beyond her years, and the way she stalks the halls, shoulders back, and eyes forward, makes the student body part like the Red Sea. The rumour mills are churning and stirring, but the lies surrounding her only adds to her mystique. There are little definitives about her, about why she's transferred to Forks of all places in the world, and why in the Spring term of her senior year. The only thing Forks High knows of the Swan is that her father is the Chief.

With this, there is another revelation that Edward is distressed to spend time dwelling on.

If Swan is Charlie's daughter, then it was no ordinary fling that was standing in that spare room this morning. It was her. It was her, wrapped only in that sheet. It was her, staring straight at him. It was her, watching him stroke his cock out in the open. Did she know it was him? The thought of her aware of who he was as she sat beside him in Biology did strange things to him: it made him sodden with anxiety and carnal pleasure and blinding confusion. She obviously didn't care, or was vehemently disgusted, or her 'don't fear, I'm wearing underwear' line was a taunt that flew over his head, or maybe it was a back-handed invitation _into_ her underwear. No wonder she didn't give anyone the time of day if her first encounter with Forks-kind was Edward wank-on-the-balcony Masen.

The gnaw of nicotine creeps sweetly into Edward's consciousness and with some amount of trepidation, he wanders onto the balcony, and lights up a cigarette, hand cupping the flame for a moment to relish its warmth. The light from the room he supposes is Swan's is on, and he reaches down into his pyjamas as more of a joke than anything. He's teasing the memory of their first confrontation, just like he's teasing himself to the brink of orgasm. It's coming closer and closer, quicker than he's used to, and for a moment he thinks of horrid things to bring himself back—the time where Eric Yorkie, another senior, had his balls trapped in his zipper; the time when he walked in on Carlisle masturbating in his office at the hospital as if his life depended on it—and he was back to flaccid, just like that.

His cock is in a vice grip as he sees a flash of Swan walking across the room, talking on the phone. His ears strain to hear the conversation, but all that becomes clearer are the crickets and Carlisle's now thunderous tapping on the keyboard in the room next to Edward's: his private study. Swan moves ponderously, but with a kind of grace as if she's dancing a two-step. He cannot make out her expression but the way her arms are flailing about animatedly, it seems as if she's in an argument with someone.

"The heart was made to be broken," recounts Edward, his voice a whisper of smoke.

He spends a long while on that balcony watching Swan, chain-smoking his way through more cigarettes than he realises. His cock maintains a semi-erect state at the sight of the girl, and when he thinks that there's no use waiting to be caught again like this morning, he turns to go back inside. As he closes the glass doors, he looks on and finds Swan sitting on the window ledge, legs swaying, legs kicking, eyes locked onto his. She beckons him back out with a single crook of the finger, but because he's too-aware of his pride, too-aware of his dignity, he steps back, shuts the drapes, and goes to bed.

"We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without," he says.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks for the support guys. Enjoy the chapter!**

 **Disclaimer: I haven't a beta, so all errors, be they factual or grammatical, are my own.**

* * *

 **Edward Masen**

 _ **Jasper's basement, picking at the label of his beer bottle**_

* * *

Radiohead's 'Jigsaw Falling into Place' is blaring through the speakers of Jasper's stereo system, through the walls of his basement, right up and through to the once silent street for the third time in a row, but Alice Evanson oversees the playlist and since she's lip locked with the host of the get-together the song plays on and on and on. No one apart from Edward has noticed, because if he isn't focused on that his mind strays to the girl sitting on a giant putrid yellow beanbag on the far side of the room.

Swan is quietly chatting away with Rosalie Hale, or perhaps a better way of describing that interaction is a measuring-up. Rosalie was poorly the first week of school, but it was inevitable that she would catch wind of the chatter surrounding the new girl. It's all anyone talked about. The moment Swan sashayed down the stairs, Rosalie had levelled her with a look, calling her over to the corner, patting a space on the beanbag beside her in a disinterested way that screamed anything but. Today Swan wore a skin-tight jersey dress in a heather grey, but Edward couldn't look at it for longer than a few seconds at a time.

The girl only said a couple of words here or there, Rosalie carrying much of the conversation, but they had been inseparable for hours. Edward wished he were the butt of that blunt which now passed between their lips, so he could hear their sacred tête-à-tête, know their secrets. Instead, he looked down at his lap where he picked at the label of a beer bottle, the sensual crooning of Thom Yorke and the marijuana smoke lulling him into a mellow high. He wondered who was brave enough to invite her to this small gathering of seniors, or whether she had heard it through the grapevine and invited herself; asking anyone would be divulging too much about his curiosity and his infatuation.

Emmett Cullen, another close friend of Edward's came and sat beside him on the lonely loveseat. He was all muscle, all jokes, all too obsessed with Rosalie.

"You know what they say about label-pickers," he says, giving Edward a lazy dimple-full smile. Edward placed the bottle at his feet and lit up a cigarette all the while giving Emmett the stink-eye.

"Jessica's not … doing the job well enough these days," Edward replies through a mouthful of smoke, regretting the words as soon as they passed through his lips, as soon as Emmett's brows shoot up.

"No way…" he gasps.

"Way."

"Have you and her ever—"

"Had sex?"

"Yes."

"No."

Emmett looks to his left where Jessica is sat on Mike Newton's lap, whispering into his massive fleshy ears, and Edward too looks in that direction but Swan and Rosalie reflect back at him in a dirty mirror beside Mike and Jessica. The girls' heads are resting on the wall behind them, as they stare at the ceiling, as they still talk.

"On Monday morning, she kissed Tyler straight after she had my dick in her mouth," Edward says. "Nothing new, but . . . I turn my back to the east, from whence comforts have increased; for light doth seize my brain with frantic pain."

Emmett rolls his eyes, and simply asks, "English?"

"If William Blake isn't English then"—he shakes his head. "What I'm implying, my uncultured friend, is that though I may have had my fun with Stanley, I don't want to sully my opinion of myself by associating with her anymore."

Emmett is quiet for a long while, contemplating Edward's words, and by the time he has stubbed out his cigarette into a nearby ashtray, Emmett had formed a somewhat coherent response: "This has everything to do with Isabella, doesn't it?"

"Who?" Edward asks, feigning puzzlement.

"Isabella Swan, you tosspot. Y'know the girl you think everyone doesn't know you've been staring at." Emmett chuckles darkly and slaps his pal on the back good-naturedly.

"I'm not staring at—"

"Her in the mirror? Or are you checking out my Rosie?" Emmett laughs quietly, leaning back against the cushions as if he's won this clandestine battle of intellect— though there wasn't many he did win against Edward.

* * *

Five songs pass before Rosalie and Bella grow quiet and make their way over to where Alice is discussing possibilities of games to engage in.

"Twister?" Mike suggests, blatantly eyeing Swan.

"Monopoly?" Angela counters quietly, and Edward smiles at her indulgently, recalling how much he liked her.

"Too basic," Lauren Mallory yells in the only way semi-paralytic people can.

Alice huffs and rolls her eyes. "How about dares?"

There's a murmur of agreement, and even the stragglers like Ben Cheney and Austin Marks who are half-heartedly playing with a deck of cards make their way over to the centre of the room, and Alice rushes to the stereo and switches the song to some more eerie techno-rock. Edward catches Swan rolling her eyes a little at the situation she finds herself in, and after a little hesitation, she takes a seat between Edward and Jessica on the grey shagpile carpet. Like clockwork, Edward's eyes are drawn to her legs, and then up to her face: she's looking as disinterested as always, as if her very presence here is causing a huge discomfort, but the ghost of a smile, the crinkle of her eyes, the all-too-brief meeting of their eyes, tells Edward a different story.

Jasper throws an empty beer bottle to Alice, and she gives it a spin, and spin it does, on and on until it lands on Mike.

"I dare you to send a dick pic to your mother," Alice shrugs, but Mike's face grows pale and ashen immediately. There's silence around the circle, a kind of appreciation for the genius of the girl, the ingenuity of the dare, an acknowledgement that there would be no pussyfooting tonight.

Mike huffs, and then to everyone's amazement, he pulls out his phone. Seconds later the deed is done.

Emmett's the first to laugh, and through the rapturous sound, Edward makes out, "You already had one saved on your phone?"

Mike's cheeks are pink, but he does nought but roll his eyes.

Jessica's dare involves her eating two raw eggs straight from the shell, Ben licks his own discoloured sock, and Tyler begrudgingly twerks for three minutes.

"Oh fuck," Mike says to himself as his phone is ringing, and he gets to his feet waving goodbye to the assembled few, and the sound of his mother's yelling streams into the deadly silent room as he leaves.

"Well then," Alice says, "let's continue."

Round and around the beer bottle goes. Jessica gives herself a wet willy in both ears, Emmett drinks two bottles of apple cider in a minute, and when the bottle faces Alice she accepts Jasper's dare of skinny dipping in his neighbour's pool—it's poorly concealed foreplay, and seconds later, in the wake of giggles and catcalls, they're gone too.

"Right, I'm in charge," declares Emmett to much derision, but they allow him or else they'll never hear the end of it.

After a ten-second twirl it lands on Swan, and Edward sees the impish glint in Emmett's eye cut to him and then Swan. His eyes light up, and he looks to be bursting out of his skin with glee. Swan shuffles a little beside him, her hands clenching and unclenching but she's staring directly into Emmett's eyes, awaiting his orders that she would take without question, he was sure of it.

"Make out with"—Edward's heart, Edward's breath, both stutter—"Rosalie."

"You can't ask her to do that!" Angela gasped, outraged. Edward, bewildered, still had enough mental capacity to acknowledge that Angela's Catholic tendencies apparently did extend to insignificant instances of pseudo-homosexual behaviour, but not to other aspects of existence here at Forks. His estimation of her faltered a tad but was still heads and shoulders above their peers.

"Oh my god yes," Tyler hisses under his breath, and Edward elbows him a little to both keep it down but also in friendly banter. Ben and Austin too shift in their seats a little, their eyes darting between the two girls in question as if watching the final of Wimbledon.

"Emmett," Lauren slurs in her nasal way, "Rosalie is not gay."

"You don't have to be gay to kiss another girl, Lauren," Jessica chides, but the way she says it us sodden with deceit. "Isabella _can_ kiss Rosalie, and _no one_ will judge her."

Swan's head snaps to look at Jessica beside her, and though Edward can't see her expression he sees Jessica's face falling.

Somehow it feels odd to him that no one is coming to support Rosalie, tell her she doesn't have to. It looks like Swan has a lot more to lose.

"The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be," Edward utters a tad too loudly, and once again silence permeates the room. Swan turns her head to look at Edward so achingly slow, and then arches a single brow. "Wouldn't you say, Swan?" he goads, knowing he's backed himself into a corner and the only way to win this exchange is to come out fighting.

She smiles, shaking her head a little, and on her hands and knees, crawls over to the other side of the circle where she practically crawls into Rosalie's lap. The image of her ass in that tight dress would never leave Edward for the rest of his life. There was a pregnant pause where every person in that room (besides the girls themselves, of course) doubted that the two would have the gumption to go through with it, but as soon as Rosalie latched her lips onto Swan's it was mayhem.

Jessica and Lauren burst into a fit of sniggers, whereas Angela crosses her arms over her chest in outrage, giving Emmett the evil eye for telling the girls to go through with such ludicrousness. However, every red-blooded male in the room dared not breathe, dared not blink, for a fantasy they thought would never materialise beyond the screens of their phones and computers was playing out before them with some enthusiasm.

Before they know it, it's over. The girls break away with a final wet and lingering kiss, and Swan gets to her feet and struts her way to the stairs that lead up and out of the basement, shoulders back, head high, as if she has not just committed social suicide. As she gets to the foot of the stairs she looks over her shoulder to the silent room.

"Can you drive me home?" she asks. She made no eye contact with anyone in the room, staring off into a space in the corner which Edward suspected was the yellow beanbag, yet, he knew she was speaking to him. He lived next door. It made sense. So he quickly got to his feet, giving a customary nod to everyone, and followed the enigma up the stairs, through the silent house, and into the night.

* * *

It's an easy fifteen-minute drive from Jasper's home to the outskirts of Forks, but Edward, with his hyper-focused mind on driving makes it there in ten, cutting his close-quartered time with Swan down by some three hundred seconds. Even if he elongated the route, even if he was caught in a rare spot of traffic, it would do him no good: after he had opened the door for her to sit in the front seat of his spanking new Volvo, she had rested her head against the seat, eyes shut, hands wringing themselves constantly. She did not make a sound; she did not open her eyes.

Edward pulls into his driveway and cuts the engine, and Swan is still in her meditative trance.

"Did I make a huge mistake tonight?" Swan says, making Edward almost jump out of his skin. He turns to see her looking at him. "They're going to make my life hell, aren't they?"

A random line of poetry is on the tip of his tongue, but he knows this neither the time nor place. "You're not in Phoenix anymore, Swan," he says. "Jessica and Lauren will suck a cock in a parking lot, but—"

" _This_ is a step too far?" she asks, incredulous.

"Yeah." Edward clears his throat, wondering whether he should ask a question that's been pestering his every thought since the two girls touched lips, touched tongues. " _Are_ you gay?" he asks, not knowing when he'll get a chance.

She smiles. "What would you say if I was?"

"It has nothing to do with me," he lies. It has everything to do with him. "Nothing Nothing at all."

She considers him with perceptive eyes, and he clears his throat. "I'm not."

"That's not going to matter anymore," he sighs. "They're—Lauren and Jessica—are going to make your life hell."

"I'm sure I can take a little teasing," she laughs humourlessly, her eyes are pained, and Edward's at odds: there's an obvious buzz of physical attraction, of sexual tension, between the two, but Swan's emotions are quickly overriding all recognition of her physical attributes. He wants to hug her, to console her fears, and yet he believes that he is not capable of platitudes and platonic touches.

"Fucking Emmett," Edward mutters, recalling how he had thrown Swan into this tangle of Forks High politics. "It's all his fault."

"And yours," she amends, and his eyes widen. "If you hadn't taunted me…"

"Each man lives his own life and pays his own price for living it," Edward replies vehemently, rewording an Oscar Wilde quote.

His words have the same effect as a slap, and she recoils. It's only then that Edward registers how close they'd come, how his words were said inches from her mouth. She undoes her seatbelt, and for all of Edward's protests, she's out of the car and jogging to her own home before he makes it out of the car.

He kicks at the pebbles lining the drive and lights up a cigarette.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple," he hisses, turning his face up at the mist of rain.

* * *

 **A/N: What was your first 'pseudo-homosexual' experience?**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: My first 'pseudo-homosexual' experience was when a friend of mine blew smoke of her cigarette into my mouth a couple of years ago and our lips touched, a fleeting quasi-shotgun kiss.**

 **Thanks for the support guys. Enjoy the chapter!**

 **Disclaimer: I haven't a beta, so all errors, be they factual or grammatical are my own.**

* * *

 **Edward Masen**

 _ **His balcony, smoking his third cigarette of the hour**_

* * *

The shin-dig at Jasper's house was on Friday night, and by Monday morning Edward can count on one hand the number of hours that he's slept. Swan's half-accusation lingers on his brain and tugs at his heart. He knows Forks well, he knows the nature of girls like Jessica and Lauren even better, and if the two hundred texts on his phones about the 'raging lesbo Bella' are anything to go by, he knows that she'll be mercilessly teased and then treated like a social pariah. The fact that Swan indicated that she felt Edward was partly responsible for her choice hurts him more than he can express; if he hadn't taunted her, she might not have agreed so readily, she might not get mocked today and tomorrow and the day after that and a fortnight from now, right up until the day she graduates from this Podunk town.

Edward has been so close to leaving the safety of his home, crossing the threshold between the two houses, and knocking at her front door; right up until the Chief pulled into his drive and dashed Edward's hopes of reconciliation in seconds. After that Edward has kept to staring out his window, and eventually turning sentinel on the balcony. His presence seems to have had the opposite effect: Swan hasn't so much as opened her thick curtains, but that has not deterred Edward. A second-long glimpse of the girl would abate his fears of her mental well-being, but this stillness is killing him slowly, one Benson and Hedges at a time.

The _ding_ - _dong_ of the doorbell forces Edward to drop the half-smoked cigarette, stubbing it out with the PVC sole of his weathered black Dr Marten's, and he made his way downstairs. Carlisle's Mercedes was back, looking good as new, and he had left rather urgently at six o'clock this morning. Mere minutes before he was due to leave for school, he should not be as surprised as he is that it's her.

She stands on his porch, tote slung over her shoulders, a thread-bare Nasa t-shirt tucked into a black leather skirt. As always Edward's eyes are drawn to her legs which are clad in some fishnet tights, and she's wearing the same heeled boots from the first time he saw her. Her lips are scarlet, and her eyes are dark. She looks like she could kill someone with a single look, but now her eyes are soft and darting.

"Hi," she says.

"Hey," he replies, stepping out of the house and locking the door behind him. "Did you need a lift?"

She hums, and adds, "Charlie left early, and I don't have a car so…"

He smiles, and they walk to the car. He holds open the door, and she mumbles something that Edward figures is a thank you. He switches on some tinkling classical music, and they drive for a few minutes in silence, before it becomes utterly unbearable for him. He simply must speak.

"I'm sorry," he declares, and Swan turns a bit in her seat so she's facing him.

"What for?" she asks, but he can tell from her tone that she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"For suggesting that—no—for making you should do something that you weren't comfortable with."

She shakes her head a little. "No."

"No? No, what?"

"No, that's not what you should be apologising for."

Indignant, Edward practically yells, "What should I apologise for then?"

"For insinuating in front of everyone that I was pretending to be … whatever it is they think I am," she says, and then goes back sitting straight and staring out the windshield. "For sowing seeds of doubt when you don't know me from Adam."

Edward is silent in his shock. For all his overthinking, he has not even considered that this would be his crime! He hasn't even considered that this girl would be more concerned with a chip in what he had implied was a mere pretence. Is this what mattered more to her? Did she _really_ not care about how he had essentially planted her in Rosalie's lap, or how she would be treated in the aftermath?

"You're going to be flayed alive today," he tells her, more to gauge her worry over the issue.

"I don't give a shit," she laughs. "Narrowmindedness is an affliction I am not cursed with."

Edward scours his brain and marvels at whether the latter part of her statement was something she had picked up, but he comes up empty.

"Well, I've had texts from everyone I know about how you're a, and I quote, a raging lesbo."

"Ha!" she laughed sharply. "As if I care."

"If you don't care now, they'll make you eventually."

"Highly unlikely."

"Trust me they will."

With that, they pull into the parking lot of Forks High, Edward parking in that sweet spot he usually did, and his mind instinctively goes to Jessica and her morning 'favours'. His stomach churns at the thought, and he considers his present company, mind riddled with boyish, almost prepubescent thoughts of her thick dark hair in his lap, streaks of lipstick on his cock.

The quiet click of the door brings Edward out from his reveries, and all that he receives is the glorious sight of Swan's ass swaying on her way into Forks High. He quickly follows her but in the swarm of bodies, loses sight of her when she turns down a corridor. His throat tightens and cheeks burn at her indifference to him; he reckons he's fairly good looking and has a decent personality, so why would she so blatantly disregard him as a potential … boyfriend?

 _Boyfriend?_ Edward thinks. _Pull yourself together, Edward._

Just as Molina is about to start his class, Swan walks in, smiling apologetically and leisurely taking her seat. Edward can see that the middle-aged slime-ball is completely taken with her, and of course, her delectable arse in that black leather skirt.

Molina begins his class on mitosis, and Edward glides his notebook into the space between them, opened to the last place, and amongst half a dozen nonsensical doodles, the words 'I'm sorry I zoned out in the car, I'm an idiot' are underlined seven times and then circled more times than he or Swan can make out. She reaches out, the fountain tip of her pen poised, and apparently scores the apology a three-point-five out of ten, and scribbles 'NO' before going back to her notetaking.

Edward glowers at her cerulean scrawl for most of the lesson, at odds with her perspective, at odds with her priorities. He's baffled and considers the possibility that she's not the cookie-cutter whore the rest of the Forks High populous thinks she is, and certainly, it's fitting with the Swan he has been conversing with. But his expectations and reality are not reconciling in a way that makes sense to him. He thinks back to last week when he saw her in only a bedsheet, the way she seemed almost wanton and promiscuous in that moment, and then the way she had chastised him for accusing her of it all being a pretence.

 _Maybe I'm closer to the truth than I know?_ he ponders. _Maybe it_ is _just a front?_

Then his thoughts bleed into grey, and he reprimands himself for thinking in such binaries. It was perfectly possible for a woman to be in control of her sexuality, just as Swan appears to be, and have a brilliant mind, one that appreciates a good classic, and who diligent in her note-taking. But Edward has not seen her kind in this town nor in the neighbouring Port Angeles, but what did he know, really? Girls from big cities were mysteries untapped, and even when he thought to history, thought to Shelley and Byron and their escapades, intercourse had never hindered their creativity. Sex seemed only to enlighten oneself, but society called it promiscuity and threw its existence behind closed doors.

He looks down at the doodles on his page, proceeds to write a different set of words, words that will make or break whatever this was between them, words to spark her ire.

'Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.'

He slides it over to her, and she gazes at it unflinchingly, and after a tense couple of seconds, in careful penmanship, with a pressure that makes ink bleed through the paper, she prints:

'NEVER TELL THE TRUTH TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT WORTHY OF IT — TWAIN'

* * *

Edward is sat on a wrought iron chair on his balcony, the fingers of one hand itching furiously at the thick growth of tawny hair over the bottom half of his face, the other kept warm by holding his cock, and a cigarette hangs from his lips. He hasn't shaved in a week, preferring the way the scruff on his jaw ages him. He has noticed a significant increase in double takes by the females of Forks High this semester, but the only girl that matters spent the day avoiding him like the plague, and on the brief meeting of their eyes in the cafeteria it was more like that bright flash of a light bulb before it blows, before it breaks.

"Raging lesbo Swan," he says, testing the words on his tongue for the first time, and he admits that they do have an asinine charm about them.

More times than he even registered did he hear those words from the mouths of his peers. Never above a whisper, never loud enough to incur the wrath of the Chief of Police's five-foot-eight daughter with the 'thunder thighs' and 'fuckhot face'. He tells himself that just because Jessica and Lauren did not pray upon her today, it did not mean she was safe. Tyler and Mike seemed to love alliteration and derogatory words in equal amounts and were coming up with increasingly creative ways of describing Swan's body, but neither possessing the balls to say it to that 'fuckhot face'.

Edward scoffs at his own assessment of the two boys. Surely, the way he jerked his cock to the sight of her in that blanket, and the image of her 'thunder thighs' burned into the back of his eyelids, was a form of degradation above and beyond what those two fools had come up with? Shaking his head in disappointment of himself, he takes a drag of his cigarette. His eyes are trained on her window as always, and for a change, the window is wide open, light on, and her thin drapes sway gently in the breeze. He knows she's in there because he had heard the murmur of her voice, and the slam of her door when she had entered. He feels like a stalker, but Swan seems to have shifted the polarity of his moral compass, because he feels no remorse, no need to repent for his peeping tom ways.

The smoke suddenly catches in his throat, in his lungs, and he coughs violently, wheezing and winded, eyes watery but screwed shut, and cheeks dotted with patches of red and lavender. When he recovers, there's a beat of silence, and then a crash of something near his feet. He yells out in surprise, and looks around to find the culprit but, predictably there's no one around. He looks down and sees a half-empty bottle of Evian. He picks it up, turning is about in his hands, and then his head snaps up to her window and the drapes have shifted in a barely-noticeable way, and undeniably, he would not have noticed had he not been staring at the very spot all evening.

"Edward, are you okay?" he hears Carlisle yell from downstairs.

He turns his head, and yells, "Yeah."

"Okay!"

Edward looks down at the bottle in his lap, blindly stubbing out the cigarette in an ashtray on the ground. He then twists the cap, and just as he brings the bottleneck to his lips, he notices smears of waxy crimson on the tip and wipes it with his thumb. It's lipstick. It's _her_ lipstick. When he takes a reverent mouthful of the crisp water, his cock jolts realising that he's tasting her, and his hand goes to it and tugs it, soothing it with the touch of her lipstick. His eyes flutter close as his gut aches dully, and as he swallows, he moans.

When his eyes open, she's there in that white sheet, stood at the window. On her face is a curious and dark look, her jaw is dropped slightly, and her chest is heaving, pebbled nipples warping the thin sheet. Edward is transfixed, paralysed, save for the hand in his pyjama pants which is moving rapidly. Her eyes cut to the movement, and she takes a small step closer to the window, and his heart lurches in his chest.

"I drink your breath," he calls to her. "Ah! Poisonous yet sweet!"

* * *

 **A/N: What was the silliest name you've ever heard anyone called?**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: A girl was called pissy-pants in high school because of a rumour of her, unfortunately, wetting herself at a party. It was cruel.**

 **Thanks for the support guys. Enjoy the chapter!**

 **Disclaimer: I haven't a beta, so all errors, be they factual or grammatical are my own.**

* * *

 **Edward Masen**

 _ **His balcony, transfixed**_

* * *

The two stare at one another, smiling. Edward's words fill him with a kind of glee, and it's infectious. But the smile on his face drops when decorum raps on the door of his brain, and he fights the itch to flee back into his room like he did the first time she had caught him. Her heavy eyelids, the way she's finally here at her window, the way she's letting the blanket fall over her shoulders, indicates that she's not entirely opposed to his blatant display of lust. The furrow of her brow displays her confusion, despite the twist of a smile on her lips. Edward is locked in a kind of mating dance, a spectacle of virility, deliberating whether she would appreciate him coming at the mere sight of her, but continuing nonetheless.

He cannot abate his exhibitionist side, and he cannot stop thinking about this Swan, and he cannot help the orgasm that ripples through him, nor the gasp of her name, nor the way his body crumples and falls back into the iron chair.

He pants, eyes still on her, registering the how she's almost leaning out the window as if to get a better look, the way that white blanket has parted like an overcoat. Her skin is ivory, with a blush blooming across her chest. His eyes roam down the valley of her ample breasts, down to her soft belly, down to her navel, down to her—

"I love!" he cries, eyes wide, gorging themselves on her flesh, "I burn, and only love require, and nothing less can quench the raging fire."

The words tumble mindlessly from his lips, and he wishes he was anywhere but here, anywhere but these few square feet of balcony with cigarettes for cobblestones. He wishes he was kneeling before her, mouth at apex, drowning. He wishes he was close enough to taste her on the fingers that were buried so deeply within her folds.

More than anything, he wishes the Chief had spent another five minutes at the station so he could hear his daughter's cries of delight.

* * *

The morning rolls around, predictably, with a dash of drizzle, and a muggy heat. It brings with it short shorts, and miniskirts, and SPF 40s. Edward considers dressing down, but stays with the familiar, with the comfortable, with his leather jacket, white turtle neck, and dark jeans. When Swan rings the doorbell, he wonders whether a change in his fashion sense might render her just as breathless as it does him. She's wearing a calf-length dress, all burgundy, all floral, all chiffon, all ruffles. On her feet are strappy heels, and her lips are her natural pink/red. She looks sublime, and he cannot help but stare at her, in awe.

"When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears: did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?"

"Do you expect this incessant and cheesy oration of yours to ever bear fruits?" she asks him, and he smiles, closes the door behind him, and they walk to the car. His hand is pressed into the small of her back, and it's electric and magnetic, he cannot escape her gravity.

"It's a kind of Tourette's," Edward tells her whilst starting up the car, as she's buckling herself in. "Or at least Carlisle seems to think so."

"Carlisle?"

"Oh, my dad," he says, waving a free hand dismissively. "He doesn't like me calling him dad."

"Is he going through a crisis?" she says, voice laced with mirth.

"Most definitely," he grins, looking at her, and as usual she's wringing her hands.

Edward drives a little slower than yesterday, and his mind is in turmoil. On one hand, he doesn't think it's productive to linger on their . . . mutual masturbation, for lack of a more interesting turn of phrase; it will make this easy breezy air turn stale. On the other hand, he's in a dire need of clarification, he needs to draw lines, establish the boundaries of their relationship, perhaps even clarify if there even is a relationship between them. Another part of his brain tells him that he needs to take it easy, that this overthinking is a product of an evolutionary need to mark her as hers, to piss on her leg, so the rest of the male Forks High population will not come near her—nor the undercover lesbians and bisexuals who think she's one of their own.

"Why did you move?" he asks instead, playing chicken.

"René—my mother—remarried, and I wanted to give her and her husband some room," she says, speaking as if she was testing and savouring each word on her tongue. "They fucked like bunnies, and the walls were thin."

Edward barks a laugh. "Ha! The Chief does too, I hate to break it to you." She cringes. "He has a revolving door, out of towners mainly, women who come to check out the reservation but stay in town."

"And you've got a front row seat to that show, right?" she says, her voice is close, the sound of it is deafening, and her breath is warm on his neck.

The Volvo swerves violently. The road is empty.

Swan gasps, falling back into her seat, and he simply must pull over. He puts the car in neutral, and tugs the handbrake up with force above and beyond what the simple action required. His hands are around her neck, and it feels soft and slender enough to snap. Her eyes are wide and startled, and he notices that amidst the brown, the chocolate, the coffee, there's flecks of mint—if the colour of her eyes were a kind of coffee, if the colour of her eyes were available at the nearest Starbucks, he would live in the stock room.

"In my dreams," he whispers, thumb drawing circles over the pulse thumping under the surface, darting his eyes down to her tongue that moves out to wet her lips. "I kiss your _cunt_ . . . _your sweet wet cunt_." Her breath catches. "In my thoughts, I make love to you all day long."

Her eyes flutter shut, and she moans.

A passing car blares it's horn when it passes.

Edward releases her, shoves the handbrake down, puts the car into first, and drives to Forks High in silence. But he's rock hard, and panting, and she's rubbing her thighs together in that tell-tale sign of arousal, and when they reach the parking lot, they meet eyes for a moment: they're ablaze, and if Edward had any sense, he would drive them all the way back home, but he removes his keys from the lock, and with a half-smile, half-grimace, he gets out the car and she follows.

"I have trig with Varner," he says.

"Good for you," she replies rolling her eyes and stalks off. He can already hear the wake of whispers about 'raging lesbo Swan' in the wake of her departure, and the odd sympathetic look to Edward, as if to say 'poor you, she's plays for the other team, and you don't even know.'

Jessica skips over to Edward, tits barely contained by her white tank top, and she's wearing plaid shorts that are practically splitting her in two, an indecent puff of camel toe at the peak of her thighs. It makes sour acrid sick rise up and up to his oesophagus, and he struggles to swallow it back down. When she touches his arm, when he smells her too-sweet blue bubble gum perfume, he fights the vomit again.

"Edward!" she squeals, her voice trilling and faux-high. "Bella's a lesbian, silly!"

Now it's Edward's turn to roll his eyes. "Emmett dared them to kiss, Jess," he reminds her. "You were there."

"No!" she cried indignant, lying through her teeth.

"Oh shut the fuck up!" Edward yells, and many turn around to look at them, but he does not care today. "She told me she isn't, it was just a bloody dare, it means nothing." Jessica still looks unconvinced, so as a cherry-top on his tirade, he adds, "You would have ate Lauren out right there in front of everyone if you were dared to . . . As if you haven't before."

The blood rises in the girl's face, and she's turning purple, and huffing, and students all around them are sniggering because they'd always suspected as much. Jessica had shagged her way to popularity, naturally meaning she had nibbled on her fair share of shagpile too, the only difference being is that there was no one to expose the truth up until now, no one brave enough to call her out on it. Forks' conservativism, it's straight-laced heterosexual nature was only skin deep, and here stood a prime example. As the colour of her face started to show through the layers of fake tan, Edward thought it best to leave her to stew in her humiliation so he turned and came face to face with Swan.

She was brooding, brow furrowed, and mouth set into a thin line. "I left my phone in your car."

"Oh!"

He unlocks the car, reaching out across the seat and plucks it up. He's barely turned around before it's wretched from his hands, and she's storming off, back towards the school. He locks his car, runs behind her, and catches up with her, pulling her into an empty classroom by her waist.

Her back is against the door, and front pressed against Edward's. She's between a rock and a hard place . . . Her cheeks are flushed and eyes watery, blinking furiously. It's entirely endearing to Edward, and not for the first time he's wondering whether his attraction to her is falling into territory beyond a simple and primitive yearning for her body, but now's not the time to dwell on it. He has approximately ten minutes before his classmates come flooding through the doors, and there are more pressing matters before him.

"You're upset," he says.

"I don't need you to fight for my honour!" she retorts.

Edward's brows furrow. "I was simply correcting her."

She huffs and rolls her eyes, but the motion forces tears to streak down her cheeks, and Edward's attempts to wipe them away in that classic romantic gesture, softly with the tips of his thumbs, and smearing them across his tongue to taste, are denied. She wiggles out of his grip, turns the handle to the door, and slinks out.

This time he makes no attempt to follow her.

He rests his forehead on the door, and unthinkingly gives it one full-forced bang. A dull ache reverberates across the taut skin, through his skull, into his brain. He wills the memories of her to fade, but she's still there in every corner and crevice, and every iota of matter. Edward is exasperated. He does not understand why he has begun to care so much for her, why he is, indeed, fighting for her honour like she said, why this ache for her goes beyond her creamy skin. It's a question that's constantly racing through his mind. He's developing deeper feelings for her, and paranoia tinges it: he does not know her in the slightest, her likes, her dislikes, her backstory, yet he's thinking about her to the point of obsession. It's not love . . . it's infatuation, and for some reason, this fact makes it worse. This feeling is a kind of recklessness of his mind, it's nonsensical, and shameful, it's infantile to the nth degree, and yet it's, undeniably, what he feels. What can he do in the face of these truths?

He sighs, and hastily makes his way to trigonometry. Jasper is waiting for him, and lifts his rucksack out of the seat beside him for Edward to take.

"So you and the lesbo?" he asks, as soon as Edward acknowledges him.

"No, you sad fuck," he replies. "For one, she's straight. Secondly—"

"Oh no! Not the secondly!"

"—we're not a thing!"

"No? Not a thing?"

"No."

"I have it good authority that you were making out not three minutes ago."

" _What_?" Edward hisses. "I wish!"

"What?" Jasper gasps.

"What, what?"

"What did you just say?"

"What did I just say?"

Jasper stares at him unblinking. Truly, he's forgotten what he's sputtered out in his amazement. News travels fast in this town, but this school is something else! He wonders how the populous has seen that but has been entirely unaware of the way Jessica had been mouth-planting his cock for weeks.

"Ed," Jasper faux-sighs. "If you're going to fuck around with her at least own that shit."

Edward nods four times and faces forwards to watch Varner shuffle around the whiteboard, scribbling some basic equations down. His aubergine coloured shirt has dark obsidian pit stains, and his overgrown mullet is laden with so many split ends that his dark hair looks peppered with dandruff. Edward considers the man; he's intelligent, once good-looking no doubt, but a sex-full and relationship-less life has reduced him to this blithering and shuffling mess, a lonely man with no roots here in Forks but this lone job. Varner looks like the kind of man who once told himself that he needn't bother with family, that a single life was the best, and then spent his entire life giving a middle-finger to the naysayers.

'I cannot end up like him,' Edward thinks, as he sees the man rub something out with his sleeve. 'I cannot let it get that bad.'

"What a sad fuck," Jasper says, shaking his head, flipping through his textbook.

"It is when suffering finds a voice—"

"For heaven's sake man!"

"—and sets our nerves quivering, that this pity comes troubling us. H. G. Wells."

* * *

 **A/N: Tell me about your favourite teacher.**


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